The Beijing Olympics - Envy and economics, then back to normal

We start with a commentary on the Olympic opening ceremony as seen from Egypt by Lelyn Masters, Our Man In Cairo:

Envy is at the root of much racism, against China, against America, against the Jews.

I saw the Chinese spectacle.  The Arabic commentator, in the dress of a sheik, explained to us that the Chinese were using the spectacle to intimidate the world.  It was quite interesting to me how the Chinese adapted the Greek ceremony.  It was as if the far east and the west had joined together and skipped the Arab world.

When the commentators spoke of Arab competitors they spoke of competitors from the “united Arab nation.”  They didn’t speak of them as if they were from individual countries.  The broadcast was from Dubai, of course, and there was no rhetoric of Emirate superiority in sports, the way it was no doubt spoken of in the US.  Again, the key phrase was “Arab unity.”

PanArabism is an interesting movement, often at odds with Islamists, but equally enraged at the existence of Israel.  It is in a spirit of Panarabism that Egyptians would feel personally threatened by Israel and the US, whereas these two countries are doing nothing against Egypt, but rather are giving tons of financial aid.

So actually, all this talk of Arab unity could be read as antisemitic, anti-Chinese (who are trying to intimidate us) and ultimately an expression of one thing: envy.

Observing the way that medal tables were displayed in different parts of the world was a microcosm of the differing perspectives on the Beijing Olympics.  The New York Times displayed them in order of total medals, which put the USA at the top.  The official Beijing Olympics website displayed them in order of Golds, then Silvers, then Bronzes, which put the Chinese at the top.  The BBC site could do either, as the strangely-named “Team GB” ended up in fourth whichever way they chose, but opted for the official table layout.  News.com.au also stuck with the official line, even though Australia stood to gain a place by using total medals as the gauge.

But the fundamental problem with any table which uses absolute numbers of medals is that it ignores the most important factors that go to make up those totals: population and wealth.  Australian economist Bill Mitchell has been compiling medal tables based on GDP, population, GDP per capita, gender and other measures for a few Olympics now, and the results give a much better insight into how impressive various countries’ performances were.  Here are a few of the highlights (listed in order from 1st to 5th):

Top five taking GDP into account:
North Korea, Zimbabwe, Mongolia, Jamaica, Georgia

Top five taking population into account:
Jamaica, Bahamas, Iceland, Slovenia, Norway

Top five taking GDP per capita into account:
North Korea, China, Ethiopia, Kenya, Zimbabwe

And here’s where the top five in terms of the official medal table came in the adjusted table (out of the 87 countries that managed to win at least one medal):

Taking GDP into account:
China (44th), USA (72nd), Russia (37th), Great Britain (54th), Germany (61st)

Taking population into account:
China (65th), USA (44th), Russia (36th), Great Britain (22nd), Germany (32nd)

Taking GDP per capita into account:
China (2nd), USA (44th), Russia (36th), Great Britain (22nd), Germany (32nd)

There are full details on Bill’s website, including how he arrived at the calculations (using North Korea’s GDP must have been very close to dividing by zero).  There’s a sense of justice in the fact that, for example, Zimbabwean athletes are up there, given how amazing it is that they managed to make the games at all.

The political atmosphere of the games was bound to linger on and even seeped into national politics - Robert Mugabe awarded a white Zimbabwean swimmer US$100,000 for her four medals and called her “a daughter of Zimbabwe” (she must have been glad it wasn’t in worthless Zimbabwean dollars); the British cyclist Chris Hoy, who won three golds in Beijing, complained of politicians “cashing in” on his success.

But what of Tibet?  What of the Beiing factories closed to clean the air?  What of the promise that by holding the Olympics in China, the Chinese government would start to relax their iron grip on the people and start to be more open?

Shanghai Scrap, a blog written by an American writer living in Shanghai with some interesting coverage of the games, has watched as things start to get back to normal.

Although it is dangerous to draw historical comparisons, as it is easy to take them too far, this is nonetheless eerily reminiscent of the Munich Olympics in 1936, when anti-semitic propaganda, the beating of Jews in the streets and any sign of rubbish, beggars, mangy animals and so on was cleaned from the streets for the duration of the Olympics - and this despite the fact that the Nuremberg Laws, which gave a legal basis for pseudo-scientific discrimination against Jews, had been passed only the year before.  As shown with compelling clarity in the BBC documentary The Thirties in Colour, Germany became the place to go on holiday after the spectacle of the Olympics.  Holidaymakers who went after the games, however, were confronted with the full force of the Nazi’s rabid anti-semitism with Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer on many street corners.  What will travellers to China see in a year’s time?

Image credit: Shajahan Moidin